Method Man
by Pipsy
Summary: Sherlock doesn't know how close his adversary is, or that the person he cares for most isn't real. One-shot.


**All standard author's notes and disclaimers apply.**

**Method Man**

The man sitting at the desk, tying on the laptop, did not consider himself to have a name. He had many. That he had been born with and spent the first several years of his life with one label hardly mattered- he did not consider that name any more valid than those he had taken in the decades since. He was a master of disguise and enjoyed immersing himself in roles, adopting identities with such seamless perfection that one would not believe it was possible that he could be anyone other than who they knew him to be. Yet his multitude of identities was only one small part of what he did, of the games that he played.

He was a mastermind criminal, anonymous and known only by e-mails and garbled phone calls, yet with his finger in every pie, big and small. He wasn't a glory hound and he didn't care for riches, nor was he overly vindictive or sadistic, which set him apart from most criminals. He didn't consider himself a "bad guy" although he knew that's how he would be labeled by the world at large- he just had philosophical differences with society. Right and wrong was by and large merely a matter of semantics, after all, and nearly everything could be justified by the right argument.

That was how lawyers made their living.

However, he had never remained in the same role for so long and he had been unprepared for the turn which had led to him deciding to maintain it. Good for him, he never took a new identity without dotting every "i" and crossing every "t" and he'd already had a rock-solid background and family in place with every minute detail accounted for. When Mycroft Holmes ran a background check- which was undoubtedly thorough- he passed with flying colors; when he was followed or surveilled by either Holmes brother, no suspicion was ever raised. He _never_ broke character, even when it seemed like he was alone. He dated, shopped for groceries, went to work, and did the full dance. It wasn't just for those watching; it was also for himself. He was fascinated by the experience, and by experimenting on others, testing his limits, seeing what other people would do.

Sherlock presented a new challenge, and it stimulated him. He had to be more clever to run his illegal activities and more vigilant- and more subtle- about adhering to his role and leaving a trail of a normal life. But, oh! How fun it was to play Sherlock Holmes! He fancied himself so brilliant, so ingenious, so smart, so above being fooled or deceived, and yet he ran around solving crimes that _he_ was helping set up right under his nose. It was a never-ending source of amusement to let Sherlock think he was winning, to let him think that he was better, while _he_ pretended to be lowly, common, and ignorant. He wonderfully Sherlock ate it up when he acted irritated, concerned, or amazed, never realizing he was being manipulated or teased.

Then there was Jim Moriarty. The man was a wonderful pawn, but a fool, in love with himself and filled with illusions of grandeur. If he'd been responsible for any of the schemes he had claimed ownership of, he might have been deserving of his infamy but, in the end, Moriarty was just a smoke screen, taking instructions and orders from _him_, the man he knew as Sebastian Moran. Moriarty had no more idea of who he really was than Sherlock Holmes did, and it had amused him greatly when (per instructions) Moriarty had unwittingly taken his boss hostage.

He was standing in broad daylight, playing both sides and holding all the cards, and no one knew. _That_ was power. The most laughable part was that, for a fleeting second, Sherlock had thought _he_ was Moriarty. Oh no, he wasn't Moriarty; he was someone much, _much_ worse. But the look in Sherlock's eyes- astonishment, disbelief, horror, betrayal- was burned in his memory as a promise of things to come.

Sadly, he realized that the only way for him to experience the full pleasure of his masterpiece was for him to do something he never had before; reveal himself. Reveal himself and let Sherlock live. It wouldn't be enough for Sherlock to discover his folly and then perish the next moment; no, he needed to live with it, at least for a time. He had to live with the knowledge that he had been duped, beaten, bested, everything that _he_ had known Sherlock to be every day for years. It wasn't that he hated Sherlock Holmes- on the contrary, he enjoyed his company immensely- but that was how the game was played.

He decided that he would start by killing Mycroft. For all of the bad blood between the brothers, they were still blood. He would make it so that Sherlock would be just shy of saving him, and he would thenceforth be tormented by the knowledge that he had failed. It was quite possible that the failure itself and not the death of his brother would be the harder to bear. He would let Sherlock brood and then, months later, reveal that there had been conspirators than thought and set him off on a long, harrowing search. There would be more deaths, more personal losses, and then finally, when he had brought Sherlock's house of cards tumbling down, _he_ would show his ace.

He would step out of the shadows and take the last piece of solid earth out from under Sherlock Holmes.

The steps creaked and he quickly finished what he was doing, leaving no trace of the messages he'd been sending, and resumed working on his blog. The door opened and Sherlock entered.

"I hope you're not busy, John," the consulting detective stated without preamble, "I have reason to believe that there are foul deeds taking place behind the velvet curtain of the opera house, and we shall be attending the 9 o'clock showing!"

John feigned indifference and continued to type. "What sort of 'foul deeds'? A masked menace hanging performers from the rafters?" he quipped.

"Not yet. Come; we'll have much work to do to make the fat lady sing!"

John closed the laptop and smiled. "I fear this case will have a lot of potential for puns and clichés. But, 'the show must go on!'"

Sherlock stared at him with a wry, amused expression as John stood. "It certainly won't be short of drama." he returned.

"Or interesting characters."

"Plots."

"Masks."

Both men chuckled and John willingly followed Sherlock's lead out of the flat. There was no mystery to solve for 'John' of course; he knew who the players were and their crimes and dirty little secrets. The game that John played was a very different one from the one that Sherlock played. In John's game, Sherlock was the toy.

As the door to the flat closed behind him, John began to hum, singing aloud sporadically.

_"Masquerade, paper faces on parade. Masquerade, the world will never find you..."_

**Please review and let me know what you think. Some of this was a little AU, since Sebastian Moran wasn't Moriarty's boss in the books- but then again John wasn't a pretender in the books! Sorry if I used improper UK vernacular anywhere in this (silly little uncultured American that I am!)**

_**Masquerade**_** verse from _Phantom of the Opera_.**


End file.
